VICARIOUS LIVES AS INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.
The eleventh chapter of Hebrews has been called the picture-gallery of
heroes. These patriots and martyrs who won our first battles for
liberty and religion made nobleness epidemic. Oft stoned and mobbed in
the cities they founded and loved, they fled into exile, where they
wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and slept in the holes of
the earth. Falling at last in the wilderness, it may be said that no
man knoweth their sepulcher and none their names. But joyfully let us
confess that the institutions most eminent and excellent in our day
represent the very principles for which these martyrs died and, dying,
conquered. For those heroes were the first to dare earth's despots.
They won the first victory over every form of vice and sin. They wove
the first threads of the flag of liberty and made it indeed the banner
of the morning, for they dyed it crimson in their heart's-blood. In
all the history of freedom there is no chapter comparable for a moment
to the glorious achievements of these men of oak and rock. Their deeds
shine on the pages of history like stars blazing in the night and their
achievements have long been celebrated in song and story. "The angels
of martyrdom and victory," says Mazzini, "are brothers; both extend
protecting wings over the cradle of the future life."
Sometimes it has happened that the brave deed of a single patriot has
rallied wavering hosts, flashed the lightning through the centuries,
and kindled whole nations into a holy enthusiasm. The opposing legions
of soldiers and inquisitors went down before the heroism of the early
church as darkness flees before the advancing sunshine. Society
admires the scholar, but man loves the hero. Wisdom shines, but
bravery inspires and lifts. Though centuries have passed, these noble
deeds still nourish man's bravery and endurance. It was not given to
these leaders to enter into the fruits of their labors. Vicariously
they died. With a few exceptions, their very names remain unknown.
But let us hasten to confess that their vicarious suffering stayed the
onset of despotism and achieved our liberty. They ransomed us from
serfdom and bought our liberty with a great price. Compared to those,
our bravest deeds do seem but brambles to the oaks at whose feet they
grow.
Having made much of the principles of the solidarity of society,
science is now engaged in emphasizing the principle of vicarious
service and suffering. The consecrated blood of yesterday is seen to
be the social and spiritual capital of to-day. Indeed, the civil,
intellectual and religious freedom and hope of our age are only the
moral courage and suffering of past ages, reappearing under new and
resplendent forms. The social vines that shelter us, the civic bough
whose clusters feed us, all spring out of ancient graves. The red
currents of sacrifice and the tides of the heart have nourished these
social growths and made their blossoms crimson and brilliant. Nor
could these treasures have been gained otherwise. Nature grants no
free favors. Every wise law, institution and custom must be paid for
with corresponding treasure. Thought itself takes toll from the brain.
To be loved is good, indeed; but love must be paid for with toil,
endurance, sacrifice--fuel that feeds love's flame.
Generous giving to-day is a great joy; but it is made possible only by
years of thrift and economy. The wine costs the clusters. The linen
costs the flax. The furniture costs the forests. The heat in the
house costs the coal in the cellar. Wealth costs much toil and sweat
by day. Wisdom costs much study and long vigils by night. Leadership
costs instant and untiring pains and service. Character costs the
long, fierce conflict with vice and sin. When Keats, walking in the
rose garden, saw the ground under the bushes all covered with pink
petals, he exclaimed; "Next year the roses should be very red!" When
Aeneas tore the bough from the myrtle tree, Virgil says the tree exuded
blood. But this is only a poet's way of saying that civilization is a
tree that is nourished, not by rain and snow, but by the tears and
blood of the patriots and prophets of yesterday.
Fortunately, in manifold ways, nature and life witness to the
universality of vicarious service and suffering. Indeed, the very
basis of the doctrine of evolution is the fact that the life of the
higher rests upon the death of the lower. The astronomers tell us that
the sun ripens our harvests by burning itself up. Each golden sheaf,
each orange bough, each bunch of figs, costs the sun thousands of tons
of carbon. Geike, the geologist, shows us that the valleys grow rich
and deep with soil through the mountains, growing bare and being
denuded of their treasure. Beholding the valleys of France and the
plains of Italy all gilded with corn and fragrant with deep grass,
where the violets and buttercups wave and toss in the summer wind,
travelers often forget that the beauty of the plains was bought, at a
great price, by the bareness of the mountains. For these mountains are
in reality vast compost heaps, nature's stores of powerful stimulants.
Daily the heat swells the flakes of granite; daily the frost splits
them; daily the rains dissolve the crushed stone into an impalpable
dust; daily the floods sweep the rich mineral foods down into the
starving valleys. Thus the glory of the mountains is not alone their
majesty of endurance, but also their patient, passionate beneficence as
they pour forth all their treasures to feed richness to the pastures,
to wreathe with beauty each distant vale and glen, to nourish all
waving harvest fields. This death of the mineral is the life of the
vegetable.
If now we descend from the mountains to explore the secrets of the sea,
Maury and Guyot show us the isles where palm trees wave and man builds
his homes and cities midst rich tropic fruits. There scientists find
that the coral islands were reared above the waves by myriads of living
creatures that died vicariously that man might live. And everywhere
nature exhibits the same sacrificial principle. Our treasures of coal
mean that vast forests have risen and fallen again for our factories
and furnaces. Nobody is richer until somebody is poorer. Evermore the
vicarious exchange is going on. The rock decays and feeds the moss and
lichen. The moss decays to feed the shrub. The shrub perishes that
the tree may have food and growth. The leaves of the tree fall that
its boughs may blossom and bear fruit. The seeds ripen to serve the
birds singing in all the boughs. The fruit falls to be food for man.
The harvests lend man strength for his commerce, his government, his
culture and conscience. The lower dies vicariously that the higher may
live. Thus nature achieves her gifts only through vast expenditures.
It is said that each of the new guns for the navy costs $100,000. But
the gun survives only a hundred explosions, so that every shot costs
$1,000. Tyndall tells us that each drop of water sheathes electric
power sufficient to charge 100,000 Leyden jars and blow the Houses of
Parliament to atoms. Farraday amazes us by his statement of the energy
required to embroider a violet or produce a strawberry. To untwist the
sunbeam and extract the rich strawberry red, to refine the sugar, and
mix its flavor, represents heat sufficient to run an engine from
Liverpool to London or from Chicago to Detroit. But because nature
does her work noiselessly we must not forget that each of her gifts
also involves tremendous expenditure.
This law of vicarious service holds equally in the intellectual world.
The author buys his poem or song with his life-blood. While traveling
north from London midst a heavy snow-storm, Lord Bacon descended from
his coach to stuff a fowl with snow to determine whether or not ice
would preserve flesh. With his life the philosopher purchased for us
the principle that does so much to preserve our fruits and foods
through the summer's heat and lend us happiness and comfort. And
Pascal, whose thoughts are the seeds that have sown many a mental life
with harvests, bought his splendid ideas by burning up his brain. The
professors who guided and loved him knew that the boy would soon be
gone, just as those who light a candle in the evening know that the
light, burning fast, will soon flicker out in the deep socket. One of
our scientists foretells the time when, by the higher mathematics, it
will be possible to compute how many brain cells must be torn down to
earn a given sum of money; how much vital force each Sir William Jones
must give in exchange for one of his forty languages and dialects; what
percentage of the original vital force will be consumed in experiencing
each new pleasure, or surmounting each new pain; how much nerve
treasure it takes to conquer each temptation or endure each
self-sacrifice. Too often society forgets that the song, law or reform
has cost the health and life of the giver. Tradition says that,
through much study, the Iliad cost Homer his eyes. There is strange
meaning in the fact that Dante's face was plowed deep with study and
suffering and written all over with the literature of sorrow.
To gain his vision of the hills of Paradise, Milton lost his vision of
earth's beauteous sights and scenes. In explanation of the early death
of Raphael and Burns, Keats and Shelley, it has been said that few
great men who are poor have lived to see forty. They bought their
greatness with life itself. A few short years ago there lived in a
western state a boy who came up to his young manhood with a great, deep
passion for the plants and shrubs. While other boys loved the din and
bustle of the city, or lingered long in the library, or turned eager
feet toward the forum, this youth plunged into the fields and forests,
and with a lover's passion for his noble mistress gave himself to roots
and seeds and flowers. While he was still a child he would tell on
what day in March the first violet bloomed; when the first snowdrop
came, and, going back through his years, could tell the very day in
spring when the first robin sang near his window. Soon the boy's
collection of plants appealed to the wonder of scholars. A little
later students from foreign countries began to send him strange flowers
from Japan and seeds from India. One midnight while he was lingering
o'er his books, suddenly the white page before him was as red with his
life-blood as the rose that lay beside his hand. And when, after two
years in Colorado, friends bore his body up the side of the mountains
he so dearly loved, no scholar in all our land left so full a
collection and exposition of the flowers of that distant state as did
this dying boy. His study and wisdom made all to be his debtors. But
he bought his wisdom with thirty years of health and happiness. We are
rich only because the young scholar, with his glorious future, for our
sakes made himself poor.
Our social treasure also is the result of vicarious service and
suffering. Sailing along the New England coasts, one man's craft
strikes a rock and goes to the bottom. But where his boat sank there
the state lifts a danger signal, and henceforth, avoiding that rock,
whole fleets are saved. One traveler makes his way through the forest
and is lost. Afterward other pilgrims avoid that way. Experimenting
with the strange root or acid or chemical, the scholar is poisoned and
dies. Taught by his agonies, others learn to avoid that danger.
Only a few centuries ago the liberty of thought was unknown. All lips
were padlocked. The public criticism of a baron meant the confiscation
of the peasant's land; the criticism of the pope meant the dungeon; the
criticism of the king meant death. Now all are free to think for
themselves, to sift all knowledge and public teachings, to cast away
the chaff and to save the precious wheat. But to buy this freedom
blood has flowed like rivers and tears have been too cheap to count.
To achieve these two principles, called liberty of thought and liberty
of speech, some four thousand battles have been fought. In exchange,
therefore, for one of these principles of freedom and happiness,
society has paid--not cash down, but blood down; vital treasure for
staining two thousand battle-fields. To-day the serf has entered into
citizenship and the slave into freedom, but the pathway along which the
slave and serf have moved has been over chasms filled with the bodies
of patriots and hills that have been leveled by heroes' hands. Why are
the travelers through the forests dry and warm midst falling rains?
Why are sailors upon all seas comfortable under their rubber coats?
Warm are they and dry midst all storms, because for twenty years
Goodyear, the discoverer of India rubber, was cold and wet and hungry,
and at last, broken-hearted, died midst poverty.
Why is Italy cleansed of the plagues that devastated her cities a
hundred years ago? Because John Howard sailed on an infected ship from
Constantinople to Venice, that he might be put into a lazaretto and
find out the clew to that awful mystery of the plague and stay its
power. How has it come that the merchants of our western ports send
ships laden with implements for the fields and conveniences for the
house into the South Sea Islands? Because such men as Patteson, the
pure-hearted, gallant boy of Eton College, gave up every prospect in
England to labor amid the Pacific savages and twice plunged into the
waters of the coral reefs, amid sharks and devil-fish and stinging
jellies, to escape the flight of poisoned arrows of which the slightest
graze meant horrible death, and in that high service died by the clubs
of the very savages whom he had often risked his life to save--the
memory of whose life did so smite the consciences of his murderers that
they laid "the young martyr in an open boat, to float away over the
bright blue waves, with his hands crossed, as if in prayer, and a palm
branch on his breast." And there, in the white light, he lies now,
immortal forever.
And why did the representatives of five great nations come together to
destroy the slave trade in Africa, and from every coast come the
columns of light to journey toward the heart of the dark continent and
rim all Africa around with little towns and villages that glow like
lighthouses for civilization? Because one day Westminster Abbey was
crowded with the great men of England, in the midst of whom stood two
black men who had brought Livingstone's body from the jungles of
Africa. There, in the great Abbey, faithful Susi told of the hero who,
worn thin as parchment through thirty attacks of the African fever,
refused Stanley's overtures, turned back toward Ulala, made his ninth
attempt to discover the head-waters of the Nile and search out the
secret lairs of the slave-dealers, only to die in the forest, with no
white man near, no hand of sister or son to cool his fevered brow or
close his glazing eyes. Faithful to the last to that which had been
the great work of his life, he wrote these words with dying hand: "All
I can add in my solitude is, may heaven's rich blessings come down on
every one who would help to heal this open sore of the world!" Why was
it that in the ten years after Livingstone's death, Africa made greater
advancement than in the previous ten centuries? All the world knows
that it was through the vicarious suffering of one of Scotland's
noblest heroes. And why is it that Curtis says that there are three
American orations that will live in history--Patrick Henry's at
Williamsburg, Abraham Lincoln's at Gettysburg and Wendell Philips' at
Faneuil Hall? A thousand martyrs to liberty lent eloquence to Henry's
lips; the hills of Gettysburg, all billowy with our noble dead, exhaled
the memories that anointed Lincoln's lips; while Lovejoy's spirit,
newly martyred at Alton, poured over Wendell Phillips' nature the full
tides of speech divine. Vicarious suffering explains each of these
immortal scenes.
Long, too, the scroll of humble heroes whose vicarious services have
exalted our common life. Recognizing this principle, Cicero built a
monument to his slave, a Greek, who daily read aloud to his master,
took notes of his conversation, wrote out his speeches and so lent the
orator increased influence and power. Scott also makes one of his
characters bestow a gift upon an aged servant. For, said the warrior,
no master can ever fully recompense the nurse who cares for his
children, or the maid who supplies their wants. To-day each giant of
the industrial realm is compassed about with a small army of men who
stand waiting to carry out his slightest behests, relieve him of
details, halve his burdens, while at the same time doubling his joys
and rewards. Lifted up in the sight of the entire community the great
man stands on a lofty pedestal builded out of helpers and aids. And
though here and now the honors and successes all go to the one giant,
and his assistants are seemingly obscure and unrecognized, hereafter
and there honors will be evenly distributed, and then how will the
great man's position shrink and shrivel!
Here also are the parents who loved books and hungered for beauty, yet
in youth were denied education and went all their life through
concealing a secret hunger and ambition, but who determined that their
children should never want for education. That the boy, therefore,
might go to college, these parents rose up early to vex the soil and
sat up late to wear their fingers thin, denying the eye beauty, denying
the taste and imagination their food, denying the appetite its
pleasures. And while they suffer and wane the boy in college grows
wise and strong and waxing great, comes home to find the parents
overwrought with service and ready to fall on death, having offered a
vicarious sacrifice of love.
And here are our own ancestors. Soon our children now lying in the
cradles of our state will without any forethought of theirs fall heir
to this rich land with all its treasures material--houses and
vineyards, factories and cities; with all its treasures mental--library
and gallery, school and church, institutions and customs. But with
what vicarious suffering were these treasures purchased! For us our
fathers subdued the continents and the kingdoms, wrought freedom,
stopped the mouths of wolves, escaped the sword of savages, turned to
flight armies of enemies, subdued the forests, drained the swamps,
planted vineyards, civilized savages, reared schoolhouses, builded
churches, founded colleges. For four generations they dwelt in cabins,
wore sheepskins and goatskins, wandered about exploring rivers and
forests and mines, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, because of
their love of liberty, and for the slave's sake were slain with the
sword--of whom this generation is not worthy. "And these all died not
having received the promise," God having reserved that for us to whom
it has been given to fall heir to the splendid achievements of our
Christian ancestors.
And what shall we more say, save only to mention those whose early
death as well as life was vicarious? What an enigma seems the career
of those cut off while yet they stand upon life's threshold! How proud
they made our hearts, standing forth all clothed with beauty, health
and splendid promise! What a waste of power, what a robbery of love,
seemed their early death! But slowly it has dawned upon us that the
footsteps that have vanished walk with us more frequently than do our
nearest friends. And the sound of the voice that is still instructs us
in our dreams as no living voice ever can. The invisible children and
friends are the real children. Their memory is a golden cord binding
us to God's throne, and drawing us upward into the kingdom of light.
Absent, they enrich us as those present cannot. And so the child who
smiled upon us and then went away, the son and the daughter whose
talents blossomed here to bear fruit above, the sweet mother's face,
the father's gentle spirit--their going it was that set open the door
of heaven and made on earth a new world. These all lived vicariously
for us, and vicariously they died!
No deeply reflective nature, therefore, will be surprised that the
vicarious principle is manifest in the Savior of the soul. Rejecting
all commercial theories, all judicial exchanges, all imputations of
characters, let us recognize the universality of this principle. God
is not at warfare with himself. If he uses the vicarious principle in
the realm of matter he will use it in the realm of mind and heart. It
is given unto parents to bear not only the weakness of the child, but
also his ignorance, his sins--perhaps, at last, his very crimes. But
nature counts it unsafe to permit any wrong to go unpunished. Nature
finds it dangerous to allow the youth to sin against brain or nerve or
digestion without visiting sharp penalties upon the offender. Fire
burns, acids eat, rocks crush, steam scalds--always, always.
Governments also find it unsafe to blot out all distinctions between
the honest citizen and the vicious criminal. The taking no notice of
sin keeps iniquity in good spirits, belittles the sanctity of law and
blurs the conscience.
With God also penalties are warnings. His punishments are thorn
hedges, safeguarding man from the thorns and thickets where serpents
brood, and forcing his feet back into the ways of wisdom and peace.
For man's integrity and happiness, therefore, conscience smites and is
smiting unceasingly. Therefore, Eugene Aram dared not trust himself
out under the stars at night, for these stars were eyes that blazed and
blazed and would not relent. But why did not the murderer, Eugene
Aram, forgive himself? When Lady Macbeth found that the water in the
basin would not wash off the red spots, but would "the multitudinous
seas incarnadine," why did not Macbeth and his wife forgive each other?
Strange, passing strange, that Shakespeare thought volcanic fires
within and forked lightning without were but the symbols of the storm
that breaks upon the eternal orb of each man's soul. If David cannot
forgive himself, if Peter cannot forgive Judas, who can forgive sins?
"Perhaps the gods may," said Plato to Socrates. "I do not know,"
answered the philosopher. "I do not know that it would be safe for the
gods to pardon." So the poet sends Macbeth out into the black night
and the blinding storm to be thrown to the ground by forces that twist
off trees and hiss among the wounded boughs and bleeding branches.
For poor Jean Valjean, weeping bitterly for his sins, while he watched
the boy play with the buttercups and prayed that God would give him,
the red and horny-handed criminal, to feel again as he felt when he
pressed his dewy cheek against his mother's knee--for Jean Valjean is
there no suffering friend, no forgiving heart? Is there no bosom where
poor Magdalene can sob out her bitter confession? What if God were the
soul's father! What if he too serves and suffers vicariously! What if
his throne is not marble but mercy! What if nature and life do but
interpret in the small this divine principle existing in the large in
him who is infinite! [1] What if Calvary is God's eternal heartache,
manifest in time! What if, sore-footed and heavy-hearted, bruised with
many a fall, we should come back to the old home, from which once we
fled away, gay and foolish prodigals! The time was when, as small boys
and girls, with blinding tears, we groped toward the mother's bosom and
sobbed out our bitter pain and sorrow with the full story of our sin.
What if the form on Calvary were like the king of eternity, toiling up
the hill of time, his feet bare, his locks all wet with the dew of
night, while he cries: "Oh, Absalom! my son, my son, Absalom!" What if
we are Absalom, and have hurt God's heart! Reason staggers. Groping,
trusting, hoping, we fall blindly on the stairs that slope through
darkness up to God. But, falling, we fall into the arms of Him who
hath suffered vicariously for man from the foundation of the world.
[1] Eternal Atonement, p. 11.
GENIUS, AND THE DEBT OF STRENGTH.
"Paul says: 'I am a debtor.' But what had he received from the Greeks
that he was bound to pay back? Was he a disciple of their philosophy?
He was not. Had he received from their bounty in the matter of art?
No. One of the most striking things in history is the fact that Paul
abode in Athens and wrote about it, without having any impression made
upon his imaginative mind, apparently, by its statues, its pictures or
its temples. The most gorgeous period of Grecian art poured its light
on his path, and he never mentioned it. The New Testament is as dead
to art-beauty as though it had been written by a hermit in an Egyptian
pyramid who had never seen the light of sun. Then what did he owe the
Greeks? Not philosophy, not art, and certainly not religion, which was
fetichism. Not a debt of literature, nor of art, nor of civil polity;
not a debt of pecuniary obligation; not an ordinary debt. He had
nothing from all these outside sources. The whole barbaric world was
without the true knowledge of God. He had that knowledge and he owed
it to every man who had it not. All the civilized world was, in these
respects, without the true inspiration; and he owed it to them simply
because they did not have it; and his debt to them was founded on this
law of benevolence of which I have been speaking, which is to supersede
selfishness, and according to which those who have are indebted to
those who have not the world over."--_Henry Ward Beecher_.